Illusionist Michael Turco was up against something real when he discovered he had cancer

You bet. Some 25 doctors and nurses in fact — all from Hackensack University Medical Center, and all out to see the "Masters of Illusion Live!" show at Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown last February.

Nor did Magician Michael Turco ask if they enjoyed the show. The Wayne-born illusionist was just grateful that they — and he — were there at all.

What the doctors couldn't tell their fellow magic-lovers in the audience, who had come to see Turco perform the levitations, disappearances and other illusions that had made him a hit on TV's "Masters of Illusion" and "America's Got Talent," is that they had been keeping the master illusionist alive for the past year.

In December 2016, Turco was diagnosed with leukemia.

Michael Turco(Photo: Masters of Illusion)

Overnight he went from 150 shows a year, in hot spots like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, to no shows in all of 2017. During much of that time, he was living in a plastic bubble as he underwent grueling chemotherapy treatments.

"It's a blood cancer, and the chemotherapy kills everything," Turco said. "I had zero immune system. I had to live in a bubble for a year. It was a very challenging time."

He got through it with grit, luck — and through the skill of his physicians. Now that he's in remission, and back living in Wayne after years of living on the West Coast, he's getting back into gear for a new Masters of illusion Live! tour that began last month and will tour through Feb. 17. He'll also be back on The CW Network's "Masters of Illusion" TV show this summer.

" 'Masters of Illusion' was very thoughtful and caring through the whole process," Turco said. "They were just waiting for me to heal and get back with them."

You can see Turco and his fellow illusionists at Englewood's bergenPAC on Friday (the show will be at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank Saturday and the Theater at Westbury in New York on Sunday).

Turco and his brother wizards Naathan Phan, Chipper Lowell and Tommy Wind each have their own specialties, and they'll do all manner of legerdemain — small tricks and big tricks, escape routines, comedy-magic and spectacle-magic, with perhaps a bit of music and dance magic thrown in.

"The greatest thing is the variety," Turco said. "My job in the show is kind of the illusionist. I do the large illusions. Making the girl disappear, levitate, cutting them in half. Things like that. And then I get to do a little audience interaction, bringing somebody up on stage."

Turco can't magically make the cancer go away. It will be another 15 to 16 months before he can be declared disease-free.

But it's fair to say that he's fought his leukemia with the same guts, determination and laser-focus that won him a career on TV, in the casinos, and on the road.

"When I was 7, I told my mom, I want to be a magician," he said. "That's what I want to do. I went to every magic store, saw the videos, talked to every magician."

Nor was this a sudden whim. He'd been nursing this ambition since he was 5 — when his parents took him to see the magic shows in Atlantic City (they had a summer house in nearby Brigantine). He would see Mark Kalin and Jinger Leigh, Michael Finney, Rocco Silano. And of course he saw the TV appearances of superstars like David Copperfield and Harry Blackstone.

But his favorite magicians were the ones he saw live. He was able to go up and talk to them afterward — something that Turco now does, in his turn, when kids come up to him.

"I watched every David Copperfield special, but he was at a level, at that time, where you weren't able to meet him, talk to him, see him face to face," Turco said. "These other guys took the time. They were able to spend a little time with me talking about magic."

As a kid, Turco was a regular at the now-defunct Mecca Magic store in Bloomfield, where he stocked up on magic coins, rope tricks and presto-chango card decks. By his middle school years (George Washington Middle School), Turco was doing neighborhood magic shows. By the the time he was a sophomore in Wayne Valley High School — class of 2000 — he formed his own talent agency.

"I started getting so many calls for magic shows that I was double-booking myself," he said. "I would say, 'I'm sorry, I have another show that day.' And then I said, why am I saying this when I can have another of my friends do the job for me and start a little business? And that's what I did. It was a great, great experience for me, at an early age, to take in some income, pay someone else, and take some income for the business."

When he went to William Paterson, he majored in communications, with an emphasis on film and TV — fields that would be useful to him, he reasoned, when he got his magic show on the road.

"I knew as soon as I graduated, I was going to use my magic and travel as much as I can, and promote it, and bring it everywhere I possible can," Turco said. "That's what started it for me."

Michael Turco in 2005.(Photo: Amy Newman/Herald News)

In short, Turco was always a man with a plan. So when fate threw him a monkey wrench in December 2016, he met it characteristically.

"I didn't feel that ill, just a little cold, stuff like that," he recalled. "Out of the blue, I got diagnosed with [leukemia]. The day I went to the hospital, I was leaving on a tour with Masters of Illusion."

His attitude was proactive. He had mastered illusions. He was going to master this.

"You go through this treatment, and you have something as serious as cancer, you can kind of sit back and veg out and let the disease kill you," he said. "But for me to sit there and do nothing would be silly. I think positive energy, positive thoughts, really keeps your body going and fighting it."

Among the people who admired his can-do spirit was the staff at Hackensack University Medical Center.

"When my doctors and nurses finally found out what I do, it was like, 'Oh my god, you're a magician, this is crazy, we've never had a magician here,' " Turco recalled. "They were like, 'Oh man, do magic, do magic.' And honestly, I wasn't up for performing or doing anything. And I said, when we're done, I'll have you guys come to a show.

"So last year, when we traveled through Morristown, all the doctors and nurses ended up coming to the show."